Two Worlds

I may not have yet finished Elder Scrolls: Oblivion (by the way, does it ever end? I’ve given like 70 hours of my life to this game) but I was pretty stoked about Two Worlds, which was purported to out-Oblivion the 360’s fantasy RPG classic. Alas, the heightening of expectations can lead to a terrible tumble and Two Worlds is this year’s biggest flub. Forsooth, ’tis loaded with the crappiest dialogue known to this genre, which is saying quite a lot, and the voice actors seem embarrassed to be spouting this pseudo-medieval blather. But even worse is that the entire enterprise feels unfinished. The world is ridiculously familiar (Oblivion lawyers are no doubt on standby) and the coding is nowhere near complete — the facial animations are bland and wooden, the vegetation pops up as you go along, throwing you right out of the moment, and the game regularly goes choppy as its frame-rate slows down — a common game critic complaint I’ve never noticed to this degree before. Sure, they’ve created a vast game world to explore with a main story (something to do with your sister being kidnapped, as if we care) and plenty of side-quests, but it’s near impossible to get through them without throwing down your controller in frustration, whether from trying to read the minuscule text (even on a high-def TV) or being defeated by simple wolves and bears. My wife, who loved Oblivion enough to actually shell out for a guide book so we could become a better mage, won’t even let me play Two Worlds if she’s in the room. Mayhap we should all just move on.